The Italian Cultural Institute (IIC) will kick off the first of the five instalments of the Verdi Festival in Oslo on 7 February with the screening of the opera Rigoletto at the attendance of Ms Anna Maria Meo, Director General of the Fondazione Teatro Regio, who will present the 2018 Verdi Festival programme running from 27 September to 21 October.
Another four of Verdi’s operas, produced and selected for the Festival, will be screened over 2018: La Forza del Destino; Macbeth; Nabucco and Aida.
The Verdi Festival is the first international festival exclusively dedicated to studying and producing operas by Giuseppe Verdi, the most widely represented composer in the world and a prestigious ambassador of Italian culture.
The Verdi Festival is held every year around the 10th of October, the Maestro’s birthday, and has its natural locations between Parma’s Teatro Regio and “Verdi’s lands”, including the jewels of Busseto and Sant’Agata-il Teatro Verdi, the Casa Barezzi Museum, the house in which Verdi was born at Roncole, and Villa Sant’Agata.
Ever since 1913, the first 100th anniversary of the birth of the composer, Parma and Busseto have commemorated the Maestro with performances by conductors like Cleofonte Campanini and the legendary Arturo Toscanini.
The Verdi Festival was launched in 2001, on the 100th anniversary of his death, and extraordinary artists have celebrated him, including conductors: Bruno Bartoletti, Riccardo Chailly, Daniele Gatti, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Daniel Oren, Antonio Pappano, Yuri Temirkanov; and opera directors: Hugo De Ana, Dante Ferretti, Peter Greenaway, Denis Krief, Pier’Alli, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Stefano Poda, Pier Luigi Samaritani, and Graham Vick.
The 2016 edition of the Verdi Festival kicked off with a new course of action. The Theatre made a considerable investment on two different fronts: first increasing the number of new productions and reopening a spectacular location like the Teatro Farnese.
Another important element featured in the new trend inaugurated by the Verdi Festival is the renewed attention for talented young Verdi voices, who are given the opportunity to perform on the stage of the Teatro Verdi in Busseto.
In order to relaunch this project, great attention is being focused on international promotion activities and a roadshow to present the 2017 Verdi Festival in several European and extra-European capitals was organised in partnership with the Regional Authorities of Emilia Romagna and the Festival’s tour operator.
This was what brought the Verdi Festival to Oslo.
The performance of Verdi’s opera Rigoletto that will be screened by the IIC, was staged at Parma’s Teatro Regio in the 2008 Verdi Festival.
